my ring
by Josie Gibbons
Summary: rose reads a letter tom left for her. slightly ansty but generally fluff... tom/rose


Rose finds a letter Tom wrote for her... just a little bit of Tom/Rose because fluff is lovely.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own these characters

Dearest Rose,

I'm writing this in a letter because I don't know how to tell you it in person. I'm sending this now, because you're twenty, and I know you're old enough to deal with what I'm telling you, to take it as you will. To not flip if it's not what you want to hear, and also to accept it if it is, not go insane.

I love you, Rosey Pose, I have done since that first time, when we were both so young. Strange really, and bad I guess, that I always loved you. When I was twelve and you were eight I loved you like I didn't love my little sister, and yet there was something more. There was always that little something more, Rose, that little thing which didn't quite make sense.

When you came to New York, when you were just nine years old, it made me so happy. It made the long years away seem so much more bearable because I knew you were there and were thinking about me. How could you not be when you were willing to come all that way just to see me, when you were willing to fight your father long enough to get him to pay your flights to New York. And it made me so happy, all warm and fuzzy inside even though I was so young.

I came back then, when I was fourteen, and you were there. And I was so, so happy to see you. And it made me think, is there something more there? Is there something I'm not quite sure about? Do I love her more than as a little sister, as my best friends little sister? But I wasn't sure, you see. I didn't know for definite at that point which I do know now. I love you Rose.

I was sixteen when I realised what it fully meant. I was sixteen and you were twelve. I'd dated girls, as you well know. But it just never felt right, there was always something not quite right there. That feeling which I should have had but didn't. And I always felt horrible for being with them because I knew I should have given them more, but I couldn't. Because my heart belonged to you. It did then and it always will do.

When I was seventeen I made the biggest decision of my life. I left America, I came back to my true home, to England, the first place I'd ever felt loved. I came back and it was amazing, the best thing I could have done. I moved into your family's house, with Indy who is like a brother to me, and you, the love of my life, the only person I could have ever wanted to be around. But even then, even then I didn't pluck up the courage.

I watched you date other guys over the years, and I watched as they broke your heart, one after another. And every time, as your heart was breaking, I was there to hold you, to comfort you, but only in a brotherly sense it seemed. And every time I wished that I could be the one with you, not so I could break your heart but so I could stop your heart ever breaking.

When you were seventeen and I was twenty-one we started dating. Knowing that you felt the same made me happier than anything else in my life ever could, would, or ever will be. I'd always assumed that it was one sided, my feelings. That you would never, could never, feel the same. And then I found out you did. And it seemed that everyone else had seen it since day one.

I'm just sorry that I didn't see it before.

I'm twenty four now, and I'm so happy in my life. But there's one thing, just one thing that would make me happier. The only thing I could ever want in my life, the only thing that would ever make me more complete than I am now. Which is why I'm writing this letter, and waiting for you to call me. Rosey Pose, you know you've been my world since you were eight years old. That's twelve years now, and it's a long time. And Rose, my darling, I want to make eight years forever. Which is why I'm asking you this question, the question I've been dying to ask for the past three years, since I really let myself realise the truth.

Rose Casson, will you marry me?

I put down the piece of paper and flopped back on the sofa, tears streaming down my face. I couldn't believe it, couldn't believe that I'd found this now.

It was the day after his funeral, and I was at home, going through his things. And this envelope had fluttered down from the top of the wardrobe, with my name on it. And the date, just a day before the accident.

So I'd opened it, because of course you're going to open something like that, and now here I was, sitting on my sofa, our sofa, tears running down my cheeks. Of course I knew what I was going to say, I knew what my answer would have been. Yes I would have married him. It was all I ever wanted in my life, to share my life with him, to be together always.

I sighed, and picked up the page again, scanning through it again, looking for some hidden meaning, some sign that he was still there, that the accident had been a dream. I was tempted to pick up the phone, to call his mobile, and I got as far as having the receiver in my hand, just on the hope that he might answer. But then I remembered, it hit me like it had done every day since the accident. Randomly, uncontrollably, and I was in tears again.

Oh my Tom, oh my true love, the only person who I could ever have wanted, how could he have been taken away from me so cruelly.

I looked at the envelope still on the table, and noticed that somehow I'd missed something. The envelope, even without the letter in it, didn't lie flat. Hands shaking, I picked it up and turned it upside down into my hand, gasping as the gold and diamond ring fell into my outstretched palm, the ring with both of our names inscribed on it. I'd thought that he was buying me some jewlery as a birthday present when we'd gone out to get my ring size checked, but now I understood.

Hand shaking, I slid the ring onto my finger and looked down at it, smiling slightly for the first time in over a week. And looking at it there, on my finger like id had always belonged there, I knew. I was not Rose Casson any more, I was Rose Coleman, and I would be for the rest of my life, just as this ring would stay on my finger until the day I died.

Just a random bit of Rose/Tom fluff... I couldn't remember Toms last name so I just gave him Coleman. Sort of angsty fluff but I quite like it. Not bad anyway

Review please? You know I love it.


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